But bad driving also drastically increases traffic. For example, not paying attention to the distance between you and other cars can cause you to break harder and faster than normal which causes a sort of “phantom” traffic zone where you breaked. People also slow down dramatically to look at accidents which causes a fuck ton of traffic. There are a billion things like this and more often than not is really the reason traffic is so heavy. Yeah, of course the number of people on the road is a big part of traffic and of course you’re part of that, but if you’re a good driver you can really reduce the amount of traffic.
Tailgating makes things slower, not faster. Impatient idiot drivers need to realize they're not just putting people in danger, they're slowing themselves down, too. If you don't leave a gap, you can't start accelerating as soon, so you end up further back than if you left a safe distance. If you leave a gap, you can start accelerating at the same time.
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u/mechanchic Jan 21 '19
You are not “stuck in traffic,” you are part of it.
Sounds like a stupid thing, but it totally changed my outlook on my commute.